While Marvel and Disney have been trying to keep the buzz on Iron Man 3 on a low hum, that’s all about to change. With the film’s release date fast approaching (May 3), the studios have started unveiling the merchandise and they also recently held a long lead press day where they showed selected members of the press about 15 minutes of the movie. In addition, right after watching the awesome-looking footage, we got to interview Robert Downey Jr. as well as Iron Man 3 director Shane Black and Kevin Feige (President of Production at Marvel Studios).

During the interview with Black and Feige, the two talked about creating the film’s iteration of The Mandarin, how the film’s plot came together, the connective tissue between The Avengers and Iron Man 3, how Downey, Black and Drew Pearce worked together on the dialogue on set, the way Iron Patriot plays a role in the sequel, the stunt-heavy filming of the Air Force One attack sequence, and so much more. If you’re looking forward to Iron Man 3, I promise you’ll love this interview. Hit the jump to either read or listen to what they had to say.

Note: This interview took place the day before the Super Bowl and it was after Marvel showed us about 15 minutes of Iron Man 3. If you’d like to know what I thought of the footage, here’s my spoiler free recap.

And since I know some of you like to read the highlights, here’s a few of them from this interview. Just know (slight) spoilers are discussed.

When Shane Black first came in to meet on the project, they had the basics of the film’s plot outlined: a Tony Stark-centric story, they wanted to blow up his life and see how he deals with a nemesis without his suits working, and get him back metaphorically to the cave with a box of scraps like the first film.

When crafting The Mandarin, Black wanted to interpret the comics character in a more realistic way for the movies that’s still recognizable, like The Joker in The Dark Knight.

This iteration of The Mandarin is a modern day terrorist who’s savvy; he knows how to use the media and the intelligence world to his benefit.

The only connective tissue between The Avengers and Iron Man 3 is the effect of the events from the Avengers on Tony’s psyche.

The story is one of Tony learning to become Tony Stark again outside the armor, vulnerable to these massive new threats.

Robert, Shane, and Drew Pearce would try to improve lines in the script on the day of shooting by gathering together and thinking about how to “plus” the scene with different dialogue.

The Iron Patriot armor is created as a response to the events of The Avengers, in that the US Government felt embarrassed that the United States was saved by a group of superheroes and not the government.

They filmed an Air Force One attack sequence using the Redbull skydiving team and digitally erasing their backpacks. They did 8 to 10 jumps a day for a week.

Initially, Shane Black wasn’t happy with the idea of working with a co-writer, but after a few meetings he and Drew Pearce became good friends and collaborators on the script.

Question: So watching the footage today it’s kind of interesting that they called his glove “The Gauntlet,” is there anything going on with that? Because there’s a Marvel thing that’s called The Infinity Gauntlet.

Kevin Feige: Whoa.

Shane Black: Wow, we just dived right in.

That was just one thing I picked out of that footage that I thought was really great.

Feige: I think [we] always have sort of called that a gauntlet. The Iron Man gauntlet, not Infinity.

Black: The giant rabbit was fun; we had enormous fun coming to work every day to see that big thing.

Just to clarify something Robert Downey Jr. said in his session, he said that Jon Favreau and he had reached out to you a couple of times so you have been involved in the Iron Man projects before this one.

Black: Only in so far as I knew Robert from a previous movie and Jon and he would come over kind of grumpy, sort of groping for ways to fix the script and they asked me a couple questions. I don’t think that I contributed anything too terribly important, although Robert’s been kind enough to cite it as having been helpful. I don’t remember that very well, frankly. I just remember they came over, we ate some food and I think one of the things Jon’s done since then, however, has been very helpful to me on this one. As an actor coming in he had every opportunity to be kind of weird or resentful, like “I did these pictures for four years and now you’re doing them?” But instead he was the nicest guy in the world and was extremely beneficial in helping like, “What would you do here, Jon?” and that kind of thing. He’s great.

I’m curious how the project came together in terms of story. How early on did you know this was the exact story you guys were going to make and how much did it change along the way?

Feige: Well we first started meeting with Shane in spring of 2011 maybe because you came in on the mix day, I think we were mixing Captain America at Fox and we were having meetings with him there. We knew a few of the elements that have remained. We had pillars of we want it to be: a Tony Stark-centric story, we want to blow up his life and see how he deals with a nemesis without his suits working, get him back metaphorically to the cave with a box of scraps, like the first movie. That has remained and carried on through, and it was one of the reasons we connected with Shane. Because if we wanted to do a big “It connects to The Avengers and then Nick Fury comes in and stuff,” I don’t think Shane would have been interested in that and I don’t I don’t think he would have been the right guy for it. But to take a Tony Stark journey and explore his character deeper than we had since the first act of the first film, he was the man. It evolved over the next 8 or 9 months after that into basically what it is now.

Of course during that you also have to sprinkle some things in for the fans, you have to make it part of that bigger world. Can you both talk about finding the balance in your jobs?

Black: I consider the fan base to basically be Marvel’s job. Mine is to be a fan and I am one and I have been from a young age, of Iron Man, so for me, I just please me and I hope that pleases the rest of the fans. It should. For instance, one of the joys for me has always been seeing how you take a villain from the comic book and realize him in a slightly more realistic way for the movie, render him for movies in a way that’s recognizable, but different. And that’s fun. Like the Joker in The Dark Knight is not the Joker from the comic book, but there’s just enough of him that you recognize him and go, “Wow, what a creative way of interpreting the Joker for motion pictures.” So that was our task here too. The fans love this character The Mandarin and we just said, “Well, what we don’t want is this potentially racist, stereotype of a Fu Manchu villain just waving his fist.” But we found a way, I think, to get an iteration of The Mandarin that we like. We got very excited about bout having cracked this story when we found out that we could include The Mandarin and give him a character that would be a perfect match, the ultimate Iron Man villain, but without relying too heavily on what the comic book stereotype was.

From what we saw today, I thought what was really compelling about even just that brief glimpse of him was how stage managed he was. To see the set that they had set up for him to deliver his address and see how very savvy the media set up is, and yet the character he’s playing is more archetypal and I think more arch than that. It’s a really interesting idea, a media terrorist, or a media-age terrorist and certainly something that we can’t help but be aware of right now, how those things get used. Was that part of what attracted you to this notion of him?

Black: From the very beginning we were all about that, yeah, the idea of just a real world interpretation of this guy who, I hate to break it to you, but he’s not from space in this. The rings are rings. They’re showmanship. They’re accoutrements. They’re paraphernalia of warfare that he sort of drapes himself with. He studies Sun Tzu. He studies insurgency tactics. He surrounds himself with dragons and symbols of warlords and Chinese iconography because he wants to represent this sort of prototypical terrorist who – we use as the example Colonel Kurtz from Apocalypse Now - this guy who may have been an American, may have been a British National, someone who is out there doing field work, supervising atrocities for the intelligence community who went nuts in the field and became this sort of devotee of war tactics, and now has surrounded himself with a group of people over which he presides, and the only thing that unifies them is this hatred of America. So he’s the ultimate terrorist, but he’s also savvy. He’s been in the intelligence world. He knows how to use the media. And taking it to a real world level like that was a lot fun for us.

It’s interesting because obviously when Iron Man started part of what was so appealing about Jon’s approach was how grounded it was, how real world it was, and now over the course of the rest of the Marvel movies, you’ve introduced a god from Asgard, space aliens, Loki, and all these truly fantastic elements and yet you still have to have Tony grounded in something recognizable. Has that been a balancing act in this film? Is there some sense that the fantastic has changed him and then changed how he deals with this world that he lives in?

Feige: Yes, and it sort of answers your other question, which is that the only real connective tissue we wanted from Avengers in this movie was Avengers’ effect on Tony’s psyche. This man who comes from this grounded universe – I always say it’s grounded enough although he builds an iron suit and flies around – the notion that Tony Stark, who is the shit and always thought of himself as top dog, now has been to outer space, nearly got killed by freaking aliens, has encountered a god that can smash him across the forest with a hammer, has encountered a guy that his father used to talk about from 1945. It’s no mistake that we meet Tony at the beginning of this movie and he’s just building suits, putting himself in the suit, and he’s much more comfortable when he’s in the suit. And a lot of this movie is about Tony learning to become Tony Stark again outside the armor, and he has a little help in that his house is completely destroyed.

Black: He’s in a world where all of the sudden, without this armor, there’s elements with which he cannot hope to compete. So his comfort in his own skin has diminished at the start of this movie by the fact that he feels like, unless he can build the perfect man, he’s going to be outdone and outshone by these people who are literally gods. So how he can then have those suits taken away from him until he’s just a man and he can’t possibly compete, that was the impetus for this movie, rip everything off him and say, “Yes, you’re alone with these incredible forces aligned against you, and you don’t even have your armor.”

Feige: And in all of our films, particularly this one with what Shane and Drew Pearce have done, you can have heightened elements. Look at Avengers, you can have these crazy otherworldly things as long as the way the characters are responding to those things…the emotional response of the characters, that’s where grounding it in reality is most important. Even in the comics, by the way, that’s the difference between caring about a comic book character and not, is if their emotional response is believable and is appropriate. Certainly what Tony is going through based on the events of Avengers is very real and, is not quite as dire as this, but is a form of post-traumatic stress. He is actually dealing with it in a way you don’t see superheroes deal with it much.

Black: It’s almost like a sub-genre in a way of taking a comic book movie and then imposing on it what would happen in the real world if this happened. And people have done that with “Damage Control” or whatever, so this is just more about trying to maintain the sense of reality form the first Iron Man given that there’s a god from space. Because if in the middle of Iron Man, when he was in the cave with Yinsen and Thor came in you would say, “What the hell is this movie? That doesn’t make any sense.” But now, Thor is there so what does that mean for our character?

When in the process did you come in to it? How much had Marvel and Marvel Film Division mapped out what Iron Man 3 was going to be? And at any stage in the process did you guys go, “Well we better take it down because we can’t go bigger than Avengers right after Avengers?”

Black: They said that to me upfront and I agree. That was the touchstone of the first meeting was that we can’t go bigger than we’ve just gone.

Feige: Well it would be a fool’s errand to do that. There’s no reason to do that. Shane was in early days. Again we wanted to get Tony, we were sort of internally talking about, back to basics, metaphorically blow him up on a convoy, put him back in a cave and see what he can do with a box of scraps. That was about as far as we had – and it was not an Avengers-centric story outside of just the effect that all of it has had on him. So no Nick Fury, no Black Widow; those were really the only parameters. And we did want him to have a mystery to uncover and solve that he would [be] on his own for. That was about it and then Shane and Drew brought it to life. And we certainly are looking over their shoulders and giving them input every step along the way, but it was a collaboration form that point.

We talked a little bit with Robert earlier about how in the first two films he would come up with lines on the spot or change things and I’m curious about his collaboration with you on this one. How much was he sticking to the script? How much were you guys fiddling with the dialogue on the day of?

Black: Well, he was sticking to the script, but the script wasn’t necessarily being written far in advance [laughs]. The script would be written sometimes a day or two in advance, but we’d have an outline for a scene. Often what it was was we would have all the jokes lined up, or all the dialogue, or all the points and beats lined up, but we would play the game of plus-ing. Which was we would say “Okay Robert, here’s your line,” and he would go, “Eh, okay, I can say that but I think we can beat it,” and I’d go, “Okay we’re shooting soon, let’s plus it, what do you want?” And then we would sit and we would talk, we would try to come to something that had that shape, but that was plus-ed. Sometimes it would Drew Pearce chiming in and we’d go, “Okay that’s a plus,” then Robert would say something. We tried to keep all the good stuff. Every once and a while someone would have an idea that we didn’t like and we’d say, “No, no that’s a minus.” It was an evolving process, but the script was always there, there was always a fallback, that was great. We could always get one that was the script and then we could say, “Try to plus.” It was like when I worked with Bruce Willis back then when Bruce used to do a lot of improving. Get one that’s the script, then talk to Bruce and play. And we’ll always have the base line, then if you can plus it, terrific. The experience with me was that most of the time Robert could plus what was there, or the collaboration of Robert, Drew, and myself in a room for 20 minutes prior to shooting would enhance what was there and it was usually better than when we walked into that trailer.

In these Iron Man movies it seems like in every other scene he’s got a new suit. In this one we’ve seen the Mark 47 and Iron Patriot. Can you talk a little bit about those, how they came into the script, and what they’re bringing to it?

Feige: Yeah, you know we’ve seen, through Avengers,7 or 8 suits and we wanted to progress that in this one. It’s part of, again, the effect Avengers had on him is that he’s tinkering even more than he did before and he’s building much more than he ever did before. The Iron Patriot is also kind of a response to Avengers. It’s a government rebrand of War Machine, frankly because the US government felt that they were slightly embarrassed by the events of Avengers. These crazy heroes known as “The Avengers” were the ones that saved the day, saved New York City, saved United States; not the government. The government felt they needed a hero of their own, they have a military officer that has one of these suits, and they paint it red, white, and blue. They pose it next to the president and Tony sort of rolls his eyes, you saw a little bit of that today. They want a hero of their own. And Tony’s like, “What do you mean, I’m a hero?” And they say “Well you’ve been spending a lot of time in your workshop. We want somebody we can rely on.” So that’s sort of how the Iron Patriot came about. And, again, it’s a thing from the comics, we just thought the Iron Patriot suit looked equal parts cool and slightly goofy in the comics. It’s not Norman Osborne or any of that stuff obviously, but it gave us a place to go with Rhodey. We wanted to take Rhodey and his sort of split loyalties between his friend and his duty and keep carrying that storyline through.

I have to ask, just to add on to that, the toy images that were leaked of the deep space suit, can you comment on what that is?

Feige: Well I would say that I’ve owned a number of “Jungle Attack” Batmans in my time and I don’t remember any jungle attack batman sequences, so.

The sequence with Air Force One, which we saw today and is going to be in the full trailers, can you talk about where that came from and filming that sequence?

Black: Well the filming of it was interesting. We decided early on, Drew and I, that I wanted to […] hijack stuff and I wanted to have people in the sky, just falling, and Iron Man is confronted with that image and he’s got to get them out of it somehow. The challenge was on the days we said, “Well we’d really love to do this, but we don’t want to do just green screen, can we just toss people out of a plane?” and they said, “Well that would probably be unethical.” But we found the Redbull skydiving team that was willing to jump out of a plane and have their backpacks erased digitally. It’s kind of compelling, the first images you see of people falling in clothes, because people are always in jumpsuits, orange or yellow jumpsuits, and when you just see some girl in a skirt and a guy in a business suit falling it’s pretty scary.

Feige: Over the course of almost a week, we did 8 to 10 jumps a day, for a week. It was amazing, amazing footage.

Moonraker did a sequence where it was a 3 week shoot for something that ended up being 8 minutes, 9 minutes.

Feige: And frankly we talked about Moonraker a lot because that sequence is actually pretty impressive, except for the fact that you can see the parachutes, until they cut in to the inserts, which it then doesn’t work at all. We wanted to be like that without doing that. And we have an Iron Man suit which is an advantage over Roger Moore.

[To Shane Black] So you came up with the idea for this sequence?

Black: Basically.

Feige: It was he and Drew; it definitely came out of their script conversations.

Black: No it was just me, Drew was…

Feige: It was definitely just Shane.

Black: He was getting the coffee.

Feige: What we loved about it was, how is Tony going to do that? If you remember he says “Jarvis, how many people are in the air?” “13” “How many can I carry?” “4” So what are you going to do?

The moment you hear that line, it’s a great hook for a commercial because immediately you need to see the rest of that set piece.